Dave Morin, the co-founder and CEO of Path, responded to the revelations by accepting that the allegations were true, but insisting that there was no underhand reason for doing so. Future versions of the iOS app would make this feature opt-in, he said.

It's believed that other apps currently perform similar data-harvesting processes.

Under the new data isolation feature of iOS 6, however, an app would have to pop up an access dialog box when attempting to access this data.

Gizmodo has highlighted the following text in the release notes of iOS 6:

"In iOS 6, the system now protects Calendars, Reminders, Contacts, and Photos as part of Apple's data isolation privacy initiative.

"Users will see access dialogs when an app tries to access any of those data types. The user can switch access on and off in Settings > Privacy.

"There are APIs available to allow developers to set a "purpose" string that is displayed to users to help them understand why their data is being requested.

"There are changes to the EventKit and Address Book frameworks to help developers with this feature."